Targeted Muscle Building and Fat Burning Systems for the Perfect Physique
It’s been a while since I’ve updated some pics.
I took these at the gym today, they aren’t great, but L wasn’t around to take them with the regular camera. I’ve got about 5 more lbs I want to drop.
Stats on these pics:
Height: 5′ 11″
Shoulders: 51″
Waist: 32.5″
Weight: 178.5
Arms: 16″
Calves: 16″
This is also in a pretty low cal state so I may end up having bigger measurements once I get to 172 ish and back to normal eating.
B
The real Nolvadex
The FDA recently requested a recall of various muscle building supplements that contained a substance called 3, 17-keto-etiocholetriene which is an anti-aromatase drug…so who cares about anti-aromatase drugs?
Well Aromatase is an enzyme that coverts testosterone to estrogen in a mans body, this conversion is where estrogenic side effects from steroid use comes from (most notably breast tissue growth aka “Bitch tits”)
So why would a natural guy who is not using testosterone want to take an anti aromatase drug/supplement?
Even normal men have a small amount of testosterone aromatizing to estrogen, the theory is that if you block even this conversion you can create a negative feedback loop tricking your body into thinking testosterone is low and thus causing your body to increase testosterone production…so the theory goes.
One of the supplements that has been recalled had a scientific research study done showing that subjects who took the product had increases in free and total testosterone…these results aren’t surprising now that we know there was a legitimate drug in the product all along.
To be fair to the manufacturer there were no adverse event reports associated with the sale of the product for the duration of it’s time on the market.
The point is that you can never really be sure what is in the products you are taking and even the FDA’s line as to what qualifies as a ‘supplement’ vs a drug is often blurry.
This is by no means the only time this has happened. In some cases drugs are knowingly put in supplements to build up the ‘street cred’ of the product, and in other cases the FDA’s definition of what qualifies as a drug is blurry enough that manufacturers just push the limit until the FDA if forced to make a decision.
It has happened with ephedrine, it happened with ‘pro-hormones’ like andro and DHEA, and now with ATD, and it will continue to happen as raw material suppliers discover new classes of compounds that fall between the line of supplment and drug.
In todays podcast we’ll discuss this recall and what goes into making a supplement and how drugs can end up in supplements without you knowing it.
John
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The Muscle Index
The Muscle Index
We talked about the Muscle Index last week and how it’s a better measure of true lean muscle mass gains.
My latest Muscle Index score is 33.4
So this is the relative number that goes with the look and shape I have right now. Anyone with a similar Muscle Index will likely have a similar look as I do (regardless of their height)
If you’re significantly more muscular than I am your number will be higher than this and if you’re less muscular or have significantly more bodyfat your number will be lower than this.
For me the Muscle Index is the best way to measure real progress towards building a lean muscular physique.
The Adonis index ratio is part of the Muscle Index and therefore having a good AI ratio is incorporated right into a good MI (Muscle Index).
The actual measurements of the muscle index are outlined in the manual which is now included in the base Adonis Index Workout system. I suggest reading this manual and following the strength testing procedure as indicated to come up with your true strength measurements.
This way you will have an accurate and comparable baseline to start charting your true lean muscle mass progress. I believe that the Muscle Index is the best way to measure real changes in muscle mass.
If you are the type who regularly exercises you already know that it’s easy to lose track of where you are in the gym or at home. Bouncing from one workout to the next and trying new things is very common and it’s easy to get distracted from what your trying to do.
You’ve got to own your goals in the gym no matter what they are. I don’t care if you want to be bigger or leaner, or both, or want to run a marathon, or a triathlon or bench press 500lbs…you can even have multiple goals, some performance based and some based on the look and shape of your body.
Whatever it is be sure that you’re on target with the real goal as it is very easy to adopt a training idea or style as an identity that completely derails you from the original goal you had in the first place. This can happen with powerlifting, crossfitting, ‘functional training’, and many other styles of exercise. If you’re honest to goodness goal is just to bench press 400lbs no matter what it takes to do that, then that is great, but our program isn’t really going to help you with that…in fact most programs won’t, the real answer for that is years of powerlifting and likely some steroids.
If on the other hand your goal is to build a great looking lean muscular physique without drugs then we got something for you!
In today’s podcast we’ll talk about the Muscle Index and how to apply it and how to recognize when your goals might have become hijacked from you when you weren’t looking.
John
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People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.
That’s a quote from a Seth Godin post I read yesterday. It got me wondering if this was the real reason people have problems when it comes to gaining muscle and losing weight.
Here’s my big issue: By giving the responsibility of your results completely to someone else, you run the risk of having your goals completely HIJACKED by the “fitterati” (that’s what I’m calling ’em)… the people that have new products and new solutions to the same problems that their old solutions supposedly solved, while giving you a new “identity”, with new goals (I’m a powerlifter, I’m a crossfitter) that MOST LIKELY aren’t congruent with what you first started out to do.
(whew)
In other words, you become victimized by the daily drive by gun down of the latest “you’re gonna die” if-you-don’t-do-it-my-way fiasco that keeps you second guessing yourself… always consuming… but never doing.
Listen, your goals are your responsibility.
You need to have them written down and LOOK at them daily. If you see a piece of advice, compare the advice back to what your ORIGINAL goal was. Don’t change your goal to fit the advice… find NEW ADVICE to fit your GOAL.
Here’s a fun quote from Pilon’s blog that might also help put the “fitterati” in perspective for you:
…stems from the fact that we like to think that the people giving us diet advice are somehow ‘perfect’.
Living perfect lives, with the perfect bodies with the perfect jobs etc.
This creates a situation where it becomes difficult to have confidence in ourselves because we simply do not measure up to these seemingly perfect people.
However, Nobody is perfect.
So here’s the truth…
That diet guru with the awesome abs that everyone thinks eats ‘perfectly’…He’s a chocolate FIEND.
The 600 pound bench presser who constantly gives advice on training..He’s had three shoulder surgeries and bone spurs removed from his elbows…as a direct result of his benching.
The Hollywood celebrity touting his super dedicated workout program he used to get in shape for “Kiss of Death 32?…He forgot to tell you he’s on various anabolic steroids.
The Paleo Princess who thinks that HFCS is made directly form the essence of the devil…She secretly loves the occasional Coca Cola when at the movies.
The shredded diet guru…who is actually about 60 pounds overweight (the pictures you see on-line are from 2001)
The dozen or so magazine covers you see every month…They are a result of Photoshop mastery.
The point is:
No one is perfect, so don’t freak out when you discover that you’re not perfect either.
The idea of having shredded abs 24/7 without even flexing is just as foreign to the professional fitness model as it is to you.
Remember, what you want is what you want. Don’t let someone bully you around (because that’s really all it is) because your goal isn’t the same as theirs.
If you want a great looking body… there’s a way to do that.
If you want to bench 400 lbs, there’s a way to do that too (that’s DIFFERENT than the “great looking” body way)
It’s your life and your body. Protect your neck! Be proud of what you want, own that goal, and GO GET IT.
And to hell with anyone that gets in your way.
Stay cool,
Brad
p.s. Make sure to “like” our fan page in the sidebar. We’re gonna start doing some really cool stuff (like cool product giveaways) up there starting next week. Do it!
Serge Nubret was RIPPED!
Measuring muscle growth and fat loss isn’t as easy as stepping on the scale although this seems to be the default way most people try to do it.
The look of your body is determined by fat mass, muscle mass and water. But this isn’t as straight forward as you might think.
Fat mass is not stored uniformly around your body, and there is a storage rate and burn patter to your fat as well. In other words some places store more fat than others (ie: Belly) and some places burn fat slower than others (ie: Belly).
We know that on a mans body, fat tends to store faster and to a higher degree in the abdomen area viscera (underneath your abs around your intestines and organs). The visceral fat actually burns quickly and this is part of the reason why your waist measurement can decrease dramatically without your abs becoming visible right away.
This fat that is above your abs is what most people refer to as ‘stubborn fat’. In reality this fat doesn’t have a bad attitude and is no more ‘stubborn’ than your shoes (I don’t know why people try to give fat a personality like this). The fat covering your abs has a lower blood supply and less fat mobilizing receptors than other fat compartments in your body, this means it takes longer for this fat to be completely burned off compared to other areas…hence the reason why your abs are the last thing to show when you’re dieting down.
This doesn’t mean you can’t get rid of this fat, it just means that it’ll be the last place you’ll finally see definition, and it’s likely not going to correlate with pounds lost on the scale when you get to your leanest look.
For experienced lifters muscle growth is also difficult to measure with a scale. Daily fluctuations in body weight can easily mask any short term change in muscle mass. The size of a muscle is somewhat transient and true changes in it’s size require longer term measurement intervals to truly track changes (6-12 months).
Measuring circumferences is a much better and more accurate way to measure changes in muscle growth compared to the scale, at least this way you have proof of where the size/muscle really is.
Measuring both muscle building and fat loss progress at the same time is virtually impossible on a scale as you can do both with no change in your bodyweight.
Since bodyweight simply cannot tell you much about your short term changes in fat or muscle mass a new and better metric is necessary…enter the Muscle Index.
As we talked about last week the Muscle Index is a way of measuring how muscular your body is withing relying on the scale and correcting for gains in weight due to fat or extracellular water weight.
In other words, if you gain 10lbs, but it’s all from fat, water and thanksgiving dinner the muscle index calculation won’t lie, but the scale will.
In todays podcast I recruit the help of a good friend Bryan Chung. Bryan is a plastic surgeon resident and has his PhD in sports medicine. You can read is critical review of fitness research at his blog: http://www.evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/
We discuss how hard it really is for the average person to guess how much bodyfat they have and what they assume their body should weigh when they’re ‘in shape’. We also talk about the uneven fat distribution patterns of men and women and why relying too much on the scale can play mind games with you and derail your progress.
John
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Arnold had a good Muscle Index
Muscle building is probably one of the most misunderstood things in fitness. This lack of understanding is partly why we can fall for scam products and false claims.
As I’ve said before muscles are much more like water balloons than bricks, and the way we build them is much more like inflating a balloon than laying bricks.
Water accounts for over 80% of your muscle volume, and the amount of water you can fit/force into your muscles plays a major role in determining how big you can make them.
The actual protein ‘scaffolding’ of your muscle fibers/cells are what make up the rest.
1) It builds more protein so the scaffolding of your muscles cells is larger
2) It forces more water, glycogen and protein into your cells hydrating and filling them with more fluid (pumping them up)
Your muscles are in a dynamic state of synthesis and degradation. If you don’t workout your muscles will eventually shrink back to their genetically predetermined original size.
In fact, if you don’t move or use your muscles at all (ie: immobilization in a cast or 100% bed rest) they will shrivel away to almost nothing.
The point is that your muscles function on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis. They will always revert back to a smaller size if you don’t force them to get bigger by lifting weights. As soon as you stop lifting weights they will start shrinking again.
Imagine that your muscles are constantly slowly leaking back to their original smaller size, and constant weight training is the only way to keep them pumped up.
Most supplement ads and fitness sites will talk about gaining ‘pounds’ of muscle. This however is not an accurate way of measuring true changes in muscle mass. You and I could gain 5-8lbs of lean mass in one day simply from eating more food and drinking water. Our lean body mass would increase, our percentage of fat mass would decrease, but our muscle mass would not have changed.
True changes in muscle mass are harder to detect in experienced lifters and therefore there must be a more precise way to measure these changes. I have come up with a new way to measure changes in muscle mass that account for bodyweight and fat mass. This new measurement is called The Muscle Index.
We’ll also talk about the Toxic Calorie level and how eating at this level is what causes fat gain, heart disease, diabetes, and other inflammatory disorders. Eating ‘big’ every once in a while isn’t so bad, but eating at your toxic calorie level on a regular basis will overwhelm your body and cause major problems.
In todays audio lesson we’ll talk about the Muscle Index and how to accurately measure changes in muscle mass.
We will also talk about the slow leak theory of muscle and why you must continue to lift weights in order to keep your muscles growing and even to maintain the size you’ve already built.
John
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